Vice President Osinbajo Gives Clarification On NNPC Contract Scandal.

Nigeria’s Vice-President, Yemi Osinbajo, has yesterday clarified that what he approved for the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), when President Muhammadu Buhari was away on medical vacation were financing loans and not contracts.
Making the clarification in a statement by his Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Mr. Laolu Akande, the Vice-President, while answering reporters’ questions after the groundbreaking ceremony of the multi-billion naira Bonny-Bodo Road project, in Bonny, Rivers State, said he didn’t sign any contract.
Akande quoted Osinbajo as explaining that the approvals he granted to the NNPC while he was Acting President were for financing arrangements for the Joint Ventures between the corporation and the IOCs, and not approvals for contracts.
Akande quoted the Vice-President as saying, “These were financing loans. Of course, you know what the Joint Ventures are, with the lOCs, like Chevron, that had to procure. In some cases, NNPC and their Joint Venture partners have to secure loans and they need authorisation to secure those loans while the President was away.”
“The law actually provides for those authorizations. So, I did grant two of them and those were presidential approvals, but they are specifically for financing joint ventures and they are loans not contracts.”